Typical Day
Chris N. Cripshin, a program manager at Macrosoft, wakes up to his alarm at 8:15AM. Chris stumbles into the kitchen of his tiny San Francisco studio apartment, where he pours himself a bowl of Wheaties. "Wheaties," the box says, "the breakfast of champions." While he eats, Chris boots up his pristine computer, responds to a couple emails from his co-workers and a consulting agency he's working with, then runs through a PowerPoint presentation he'll be giving later that afternoon.
Though he works around forty-five hours per week, he spends only about half that time in the office. The rest of the time, he's either at a café (the Stardollars around the corner has free wifi) or hunched over a bowl of Wheaties (which could be breakfast, lunch, or dinner).
Close to 11:00AM, Chris finishes some of the coding he's been doing. Looking up from his computer, he blinks hard. Even sitting near the window with light streaming in, Chris still feels the strain on his eyes. He cracks his knuckles, rolls his shoulders, and decides it's time to head for the office. The short walk from building to vehicle will do him good. He promised both his doctor and his girlfriend that he'd be more active. That (somewhat insulting) pedometer his girlfriend got him last Christmas has been gathering dust.
Entering his office at Macrosoft, Chris greets his coworkers. It's a friendly office, populated by like-minded people. Chris feels at home. He's liked puzzles since he was a little kid, when he and his dad would pass the time on the commute to school with logic puzzles and word problems. Naturally, Chris double-majored in math and computer science in college.
With its emphasis on creativity and problem solving, his job at Macrosoft feels a lot like those backseat math problems. Stuffing his tuna sandwich into the office refrigerator (and taking care to label it so Phil can't "accidentally" steal it again), Chris goes to his desk to do some administrative work. Now that he's the program head, Chris has been splitting his time at work between administrative stuff (project meetings, documents, spreadsheets) and his independent research projects.
There's a knock at his office door.
"Tienes un momento?" Andres asks.
"Claro."
Chris speaks Spanish. He also speaks German, which he picked up during a year-long fellowship at the Freie Universität Berlin. And of course, he "speaks" Java, SQL, CPLEX, SPSS, and Matlab. Spanish he learned mostly for fun, though. Chris likes languages.
He talks for a while with Andres about a new data management project they're working on. Chris checks over Andres' computations, and promises to do a little research himself. Together, they stare at the computational model. Not many people would think this was a productive meeting.
As the minutes tick by on the clock, they scarcely talk to one another. But it's all part of the process. These algorithms and computational models are so complex, they need to be delicately handled. Finally, Chris resolves to pass the question along to a talented Ph.D. student he knows who might have some suggestions. Collaboration is key in the cryptography circle.
An hour later, Chris goes to his presentation, feeling pretty confident in the PowerPoint he practiced earlier that morning. Only recently promoted to the managerial position, Chris is still adjusting to regularly speaking in front of everyone.
The presentation is on the work that the department has been doing, extracting data via code (SQL, SAS). In general, Chris feels good about the presentation, especially after seeing how engaged the executives in the audience (non-crypto people, with only a little background in math...mostly statistics) were in the concepts he was presenting.
At 6:00PM, Chris begins to pack up his stuff for the evening. He calls his girlfriend to ask if he should pick anything up for dinner that night. "Please not salad, please not salad," he thinks silently to himself.
She's already making salad. He sighs; having someone love him and want him to be healthy is annoying sometimes.